Audio Video News

Last week, several companies announced what they describe as a "unique, innovative project which will demonstrate the future of home entertainment." The project, named "CompleteTV," is intended to enable 20 families in Raleigh, North Carolina to take part in a pilot program beginning during the second quarter of 2001, giving them access to a home entertainment "experience" which will attempt to combine the worlds of broadcast HD programming and Internet-based information and entertainment.

Networks of computers and digital peripherals in office buildings are becoming old hat. Most organizations have hired a specialist to maintain the network and install new equipment as it comes in. Such an environment makes it possible to add complex new systems and software along with infrastructure (wiring) upgrades on a regular basis.

The living room in most American homes has traditionally served ceremonial purposes. It's the place where your parents entertained visiting dignitaries, like the local minister who came to offer consolation after your grandmother's funeral. It's the place where they took pictures of you and your senior-prom date. As a showcase for stiff, uncomfortable, and rarely used furniture, the traditional living room is an ornamental vestige of a bygone, formal era, like buttons on the sleeve of a dinner jacket.

I've just cut 12 columns on room tuning and system tweaking out of my Home Theater Architect series. I was going to go into some serious detail about how to use analyzers to aim speakers and optimize chair positions, how to position acoustical treatments to get the best bass smoothing and imaging, and how to use things like SPL meters and color analyzers to dial in audio and video performance. But instead, I'm going to quickly wrap up my installation of Jack and Diane's home theater in the next five issues, and start working with new clients (Sam and Janet).

Home theaters are becoming ever more affordable according to new data just released by the <A HREF="http://www.cema.org">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> (CEMA). In 1997, dollar sales of home-theater products reached $8.2 billion---a slight drop from the $8.3 billion generated in the previous year---but many of the essential components of home-theater systems sold more units than ever before. Overall unit sales of home-theater products rose 5%.